About Forever
by Fair-Ithil
Summary: She’d like to think that one day they’ll be old and grey together and he’ll still look at her like she’s the shiniest thing in the verse without frowning half as much, but she don’t...Love and eternity can't always go hand in hand [KayleeSimon]


**Disclaimer: Still wishing I could own Simon. **

**A/N:** I wrote this a while ago for my best friend and while roaming through my files in search of a bunny, and found it. Hope it makes up for my lack of updating recently, but well, school sucks.** Anyway, Post BDM, Simon/Kaylee, more than one reference to original characters, let me know what you think. **

**- **

_**For the sweet and lively maiden whom the angels call Lenore--even if it's only in a whisper.**_

**-**

It started when she asked him what the doctorin' word for back was. Launched him into a long winded explanation about body parts and anatomy and such, ended with his shirt on the floor while she explored said body parts.

It was a win-win situation as far as she was concerned.

Turned into a game of sorts, her wantin' to know, him babblin' until words became as much of a hindrance as the clothing did.

And while normally it was a game she took charge in there were the occasional nights when he was the one who labeled and touched. She didn't have a problem with it most of the time, nothing wrong with Simon having his own fun after all, not when he was smiling and tracing her hipbone with that look on his face like she was the shiniest thing in the whole wide 'verse.

Except that sometimes Simon forgot to have fun, sometimes he just came back to the scar Dobson's bullet had left on her, the ugly circle of puckered white skin that made it hard to wear shirt that rode up at all.

She had other scars, and he'd hounded her for the stories behind all of them and she told them, told him about the time Lucas had pushed her out of the tree swing and she'd split her knee open, or the time Mattie Walker had thrown a rock at her leaving the hardly seeable line right next to her right ear. Told him about the time her daddy had found her in the back seat of the mule with the Woo boy and how she refused to go to her momma afterward, how the welt had gotten infected and refused to heal up proper like on her back.

And sometimes he would laugh at her stories but mostly he would frown, that tiny Simon frown he still thought she didn't notice 'cause it hardly showed on his mouth. But she always saw it right before he kissed her and the scar in question, like he was trying to make something right, something that didn't cause her no grief—well sometimes she looked at her knee and missed Lucas something fierce but she usual dealt with that by sending home extra credits so Momma could put some fresh flowers on his grave when Sunday mass came along.

But it was different when he kissed the Dobson scar, different cause he wasn't trying to fix something he knew only by word of mouth, 'stead he was trying to get rid of something he'd left behind. Something even his tiny perfect stitches hadn't been able to keep away. He was apologizing, and it didn't matter how many times she told him it wasn't his fault, didn't matter how many times she told him she didn't hold nothing against him or how she never once thought he was gonna let her die there on the cargo hold floor. Didn't matter because he always looked at that scar the same way, like he was reliving that day over and over again.

Sometimes she figured it didn't really have anything to do with her, not all the way, sometimes she thought it had everything to do with the fact that he wasn't the same man who had stood over her and told the captain to run and he knew it.

She saw the way his eyes darkened a little whenever she talked about what was going on at home, or when she told him something that happened long ago. Knew he was thinkin' all about the things he couldn't go back to, not ever 'cause his parents had decided to be _dai ruo mu ji _who'd turn River back to that Academy before believing their son. Said nearly as much when his father had come out against the Miranda Transmission and though she knows it makes her selfish, she's more than a mite glad he's got nowhere but Serenity to call home.

He told her he loved her once—and he hasn't said again since, which she thinks might be 'cause she can't find the voice to say the words back, though she knows it true—but she's got more than a few doubts concerning how long he'd be with her if he had the option of going back to his old life. He's a good man, ain't a doubt in the 'verse over that and he couldn't be blamed if he grew outta of her, if he found something better, someone who would know all the steps to the fancy dances River and Inara sometimes do in the cargo hold because River doesn't want her feet to forget.

She don't put too much trust in the future, she learned that from when Lucas didn't come home and Momma cried and cried for days, so she don't let herself see much when it comes to Simon 'cept for the now. Oh, she'd like to think that one day they'll be old and grey together and he'll still look at her like she's the shiniest thing in the verse without frowning half as much, but she don't.

Instead she kisses him by surprise when he's elbow deep in work, and she wears his shirts when they go on kitchen raids in the middle of the night, and she listens when he talks, about his old academy or the hospital or how River's doing today. And she's more than ready to listen if he decides one day he's gonna talk about his parents, but if he wants to kiss her and touch her and smile instead, well she's fine with that too.

It's just that sometimes Simon talks and it ain't about the past. Sometimes he talks about things staying just like they are, or changing for the better. When Simon talks like that she knows he's thinking along the lines of forever and ever, him and her and whatever life it is they make for themselves. He's not perfect, _shuài _as the 'verse is wide but he's got his moments when his words sting like a bruise and just 'cause he's found better ways to make things up to her don't lessen that fact any.

Still there are other times when she finds herself looking at him, all asleep right there in her bunk, and she don't mind fancying the thought of forever.

**-**

**End**

**-**

**Feedback is Love**


End file.
